Another turbulent year for cybersecurity finds itself right at home alongside global economic headwinds and geopolitical tensions. This year has been defined by rampant affiliate activity, a seemingly endless stream of new vulnerabilities and exploits, and the widespread abuse of valid credentials. These circumstances have conspired to drive a 50% increase in interactive intrusion activity tracked by CrowdStrike Falcon OverWatch™ threat hunters this year.

As cyberattacks continue to grow relentlessly, enterprises have to continue improving their cyber defenses to stay one step ahead of the adversaries. One area that CISOs have recently started paying more attention is identity threat protection. This is not surprising considering 80% of modern attacks are identity-driven leveraging stolen credentials. In fact, identity threat detection and response is highlighted as one of the top trends in cybersecurity in 2022 by Gartner.

Threat hunting is a critical security function, a proactive measure to detect warning signs and head off attacks before a breach can occur. Scaling threat hunting capabilities involves quickly deriving actionable intelligence from a large number of behavioral data signals to identify gaps and reduce time to respond.

Impacket’s wmiexec.py (“wmiexec”) is a popular tool used by red teams and threat actors alike. The CrowdStrike Services team commonly sees threat actors leveraging wmiexec to move laterally and execute commands on remote systems as wmiexec leverages Windows native protocols to more easily blend in with benign activity.